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Wow… now this is truly something interesting yet challenging to listen, and especially to review. I am not sure at all how to call – or even worse how to categorize this stuff in the first place. This Finnish trio, Die Schwarzen Ladas, creates chaos, confusion and first and foremost, a fair amount of mixed thoughts in people’s mind. They have recorded an album that may turn out to be a pretty hard nut to be broken for many of us, I’m afraid.

That’s what it was like even to me at first. But somehow I eventually managed to make an invasion straight into the very soul of this record. Now I am seemingly enjoying the heck out of it. On this same journey with the band’s 5-track debut record titled Wahrheit, keeping me the company the best it can, I have been identifying several other bands on my sort of ‘educational adventure’ towards these Finns progressive world of both rock music and heavy rock elements that they have touched upon on this record. Some faint flickers and nuances from such bands as Black Sabbath, Porcupine Tree, Riverside, Pink Floyd (hardly any surprise) and the likes, can be spotted out from this record. we must also not to forget to mention that vocalist nicknamed as Volker, has also this strange tendency to sound a bit like Mr. Cornell of Soundgarden, especially on the last song of the record, “Gott Hat Gegeben (start listening about at the 2:17min mark)”. There are several musical contrasts (or extremes) on this record that overall all create a nice musical balance over their songs; at times Die Schwarzen Ladas seem to be wandering on some dark and oppressive territories music-wise while at some other times they tend to have this ‘happy & hopeful’ mode on. During those – may I say with a careful caution, teeny-weeny ‘happier moments’, it is somehow refreshing to get away from the darkest shadows for a precious little while. I am also delighted about the fact they have left so much space for the bass sound within their sound, which clearly displays the very same heavy, warm and familiar – sort of trademark bass sound which Black Sabbath become known for in the early 70’s.

However, at the end of the day Wahrheit offers anything but an easy listen, even if the guys make it all sound like they have jammed all this stuff together during 2 or 3 rehearsals only. Then again, it’s been said diamonds are made under pressure – and not music. This is exactly how Die Schwarzen Ladas also do sound like: Very atmospheric, airy, soulful, captivating and pressure-free.